It’s been a year and a half since I recorded the last episode of Counting to 5, and I thought I would write a few words about my experience with the podcast and why it ended.
First, why did I stop? The short answer is, no one was listening. The slightly longer answer is, I couldn’t justify the huge amount of time I was sinking into the project for so little return. I want to be clear — I loved the podcast and miss doing it. I enjoyed researching and preparing the episodes, and I enjoyed recording them (once I started livestreaming and stopped spending so much time editing). And I absolutely loved the listener feedback, especially the occasional live comments as I recorded. But there just wasn’t enough of it.
Here are some positives: I’m very proud of the quality of the content I put out. Yes, the production value was amateurish. But I think the legal analysis stacks up well against anything else that was out there at the time, and — once I started the livestreams — there was nothing even close in terms of comprehensiveness of coverage, and there has been nothing comparable since. When I look back at the last six months of the 2017–2018 term (26 consecutive weeks of regular livestreams), I’m extremely proud of the breadth of coverage. I discussed every upcoming oral argument, every opinion, every cert grant, every death penalty stay order, and a whole bunch of other news about the Court, often in considerable detail.
I hadn’t had a great deal of public speaking experience before the podcast, and I think it probably helped my confidence a bit. When I began the podcast, I hated listening to my own recorded voice, but once I started editing the episodes, spending hours focusing in on every false start, verbal tic, and disfluency, I got over it surprisingly quickly.
But here are some negatives: That feedback that I loved getting? It was almost nonexistent. There were entire weeks where I didn’t get so much as a single comment or email. My best weeks were in the single digits for email and comments across all platforms. And on this point, I have to give special thanks to several close family members who were often the only people I heard anything from.
I never managed to build a significant audience. Most of my episodes topped out just shy of 500 downloads and my top episodes didn’t quite break 1000. The YouTube versions averaged 20-odd views apiece. Self-promotion is not one of my strengths, but I made a real effort to reach out in various ways on different platforms and nothing seemed particularly effective. I don’t know whether I just wasn’t reaching people, or if the people I was reaching just didn’t enjoy what I was putting out.
Some things were a mixed bag. I discovered that a surprising number of attorneys in private practice viewed the whole concept of the podcast as a negative. If it wasn’t either making money or bringing in clients, it was dilettantism and a waste of time. On the other hand, I believe I landed an interview for a very attractive job largely on the strength of the podcast. I didn’t ultimately get hired (though I was a finalist), but I think the podcast was likely the only reason I was in the running for the position in the first place. At my current firm, other attorneys have been uniformly appreciative of my enthusiasm and knowledge about the Supreme Court, even though it has little to no connection to our day-to-day practice, but I doubt the podcast played much role, positive or negative, in me getting the job.
When I decided that the podcast wasn’t sustainable long term, I reached out to various journalists and media outlets, academic centers, and nonprofits to try to find someone willing to sponsor or partner with or otherwise absorb the podcast, either in its existing form or in some new iteration. I got some preliminary interest from a few places, but nothing that went anywhere. And without a significant audience or a viable advertiser or listener-supported business model, I suppose I didn’t have a whole lot to offer.
So, I went on indefinite hiatus at the end of the Court’s term, still reaching out to people and hoping I could find a way to make it work, but knowing that there was a strong possibility that I wouldn’t be back. I still miss doing it, and I would love to restart it (in one form or another) at some point, but right now there are no realistic prospects in the foreseeable future, so I’m focusing my energies in different directions.
Finally, since the podcast ended, I haven’t had much of an outlet for my thoughts about the Supreme Court. But I have this website just sitting here. So, going forward, I’m hoping to use this space for occasional blog posts, primarily about the Supreme Court. But I make no promises that I’ll post with any frequency.